How to Install Moonmoon on Ubuntu Server

Moonmoon is a simple and customizable self-hosted RSS aggregator tool that allows you to keep up with your favorite blogs and news sites without having to visit each site separately. In this tutorial, we'll guide you through the process of installing Moonmoon on Ubuntu Server.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure that you have the following:

• A VPS or dedicated server running Ubuntu Server (version 18.04 or later)
• root or sudo privileges
• Basic knowledge of the Linux command line interface

Step 1: Install Dependencies

First, update the package list and install the required dependencies by running the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y apache2 php7.2 php7.2-mysql libapache2-mod-php7.2 php-curl php-mbstring php7.2-xml

This command will install Apache, PHP, MySQL, and other necessary dependencies.

Step 2: Download and Install Moonmoon

To download and install Moonmoon, run the following commands in your terminal:

cd /var/www/html
sudo rm -fr *
sudo wget https://github.com/mauricesvay/moonmoon/archive/master.zip
sudo unzip master.zip
sudo mv moonmoon-master moonmoon
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data moonmoon/

This command will download the Moonmoon source code from the official repository, extract the files, move them to the /var/www/html/ directory, and set the owner to www-data, which is the user that Apache runs under.

Step 3: Create a Database

Moonmoon requires a MySQL database to store its feed data. Run the following commands in your terminal to create a database, a user, and grant the user access to the database:

sudo mysql
CREATE DATABASE moonmoon;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON moonmoon.* TO 'moonmoonuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Replace password with a strong password of your choice.

Step 4: Configure Moonmoon

Next, configure Moonmoon by copying the sample configuration file:

cd /var/www/html/moonmoon/
sudo cp config/moonmoon.ini.sample config/moonmoon.ini

And update it by editing the following settings:

• base_url - The URL of your website
• base_path - The path to your Moonmoon installation
• db_type - The type of database (mysql)
• db_host - The database hostname (localhost)
• db_name - The name of the database (moonmoon)
• db_user - The database username (moonmoonuser)
• db_pass - The database password (the password you set in Step 3)

Save the changes.

Step 5: Set Directory Permissions

To allow Moonmoon to write to certain directories, set the correct permissions:

sudo chmod -R 777 cache/ images/

Step 6: Restart Apache Server

Now, restart the Apache server to make the changes take effect:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 7: Launch Moonmoon

You're all set! Visit your website on the browser, and Moonmoon will be up and running.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we showed you how to install Moonmoon, a customizable self-hosted RSS aggregator tool, on Ubuntu Server. With Moonmoon, you can keep up with your favorite blogs and news sites in a centralized place.

Happy Reading!

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